… he pounded out on his Ono-Sendai deck…

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the “cyberpunk” wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Heinlein fans, rejoice — somebody has finally started a company called We Also Walk Dogs.

It would be much better if they actually listed dog walking under services, though.

Dan tagged me earlier today, so…

Total number of books I’ve owned: My OCD must be acting up, because I decided the most accurate way to answer this one was to try to get a current count and extrapolate from there. So, currently, there are at least 1150 books in our house — not counting TheChild’s story/board books (of which there are easily a hundred or more), and not counting the stuff that’s in the garage awaiting donation and/or give-away. Of those, about 250 are in my “to read” queue (a not quite completely disjoint set are in TheWife’s “to read” queue), and about 200 are trade paperback collections of comics — I mention that because I suspect some people wouldn’t count those as “real” books. Since I’ve had several cross-country moves, as well as a period in gradual school where I was heavily into used books to support my fiction habit, I’d estimate my lifetime total somewhere in between 2 and 4 times our current load.

(Trees hate my damn guts.)

Last book I bought: Impulse purchase, this past Friday: ORA’s Javascript and DHTML Cookbook. Interestingly, Buzz Aldrin and Wendell Minor were in that very bookstore signing Reaching For The Moon; I decided the line was too long. If I’d known I was going to be writing this entry, I might have decided differently…

Last book I read: Currently reading several:

• Learning Perl, 3rd edition; one of the texts for the class I now may not be teaching this summer
• Higher Order Perl, to stretch my brain back out after the Llama,
• The Star Fraction, for our book group meeting the weekend after this upcoming one. (This is a half-fib: I’ve already read the book once, and haven’t actually cracked it again — yet. But it’s sitting right here, and I’m going to start once I post this.)

Last book I finished: I finished two on Sunday: Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd. ed. and Randal Schwartz’s Perls of Wisdom. I’d stalled out on both of these, so I took some time Sunday and pushed on through to the end of both.

Five books that mean a lot to me: In no particular order:

• House, Tracy Kidder — This was a text in a class that TheWife and I had together in college, before we even really knew each other. Special because of that connection as well as because of the interesting content.
• Microserfs, Douglas Coupland — I read this in gradual school, right as my dissatisfaction with what I was doing was starting to really peak. In some ways, this was like a John Hughes movie of all the cool stuff it seemed like I was missing out on. Also has the best description of geek motivation — the 1.0 imperative — evah.
• The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein — There’s lots of Heinlein I could have picked, but this is my stone-cold favorite.
• Learning Perl, 2nd edition, Randal Schwarz et al. — The book mostly directly responsible for where I am today, in a professional sense.
• Transmetropolitan, Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson — The modern gonzo comic and essential guide to understanding today’s media culture. I’d pick a favorite volume out of the eleven, but it would just change tomorrow, so what’s the point?

Five people Id like to see to do this as well: I’d have picked Lyn too, but Dan beat me to it, so I’ll spread the joy a bit:

• Eric (Snowdeal.org)
• Rafe (rc3.org)
• JenB (Divinest Sense)
• Glen (Immediacy)
• David Chess

In a recent Nerve interview, Douglas Coupland talks about his next book — a sequel to the excellent Microserfs:

My next novel is actually ninety-five percent done right now, but it’s a sequel to [1995's] Microserfs. Now they work for Electronic Arts, the computer-game company.

I’m really looking forward to this one, especially with all the stuff about the work culture at EA in the news recently.

Bruce Sterling is at the Olssons in Arlington tonight for a reading from his new book. I’m planning on being there; if anybody reading this is going to be there, give a shoutout to the usual place…

Laurence Lessig is going to be signing books in DC next week. Not sure if I’m going to be able to make it; if anybody is going, drop a line and maybe we can meet up.

Yeah, yeah, we’re one day late — but that’s almost a tradition in this family. Anyway, TheBaby wishes the good doctor a happy hundreth:

/. pointed to a Bruce Sterling interview, which is worth a read. The part that really struck me comes towards the end, when Sterling says (almost as a throwaway line):

…there are certain psychological aspects to human social organization that — I wouldn’t call them timeless, but they are commonalities.

I also like to experiment with them. I like to experiment with the media. I’d like to see what people can do with the Internet that they cannot do on paper. And there are certain things one can do that are not worth doing. Like I can set up a discussion group that’s open to everybody! And that is not worth doing. It’s sort of proven that it immediately turns into a cesspool because it’s badly designed.

And I thought, hmm, that has relevance for recent discussions both at Medley (“Unfounded Communities” and “More on Communities”) and at Flutterby (“Incoherrent Comments” and “death of weblogs, film at 11″). So I’m pointing it out, because I don’t know the answers to any of the questions that Medley and Flutterby are raising, but I am interested in continuing to talk about them. (Maybe if we talk about the problem for long enough, we won’t need to find the answer anymore…)